SHEBOYGAN – A south-side shooting in Sheboygan last week that left nobody injured may have been set up by one of the occupants of the vehicle targeted by gunfire, according to a teenage boy who spoke with police.

Julian M. R. Ramirez and Manuel Alberto Amador, both of Sheboygan, were charged this week with first-degree recklessly endangering safety, each as party to a crime, for their alleged involvement in the Friday evening shooting along the 1200 block of South 20th Street.

Police reported Sunday that both men had turned themselves in. If convicted, each could face as much as a $25,000 fine and up to 12½ years in prison and on extended supervision.

Julian M. R. Ramirez(Photo: Courtesy of Sheboygan Police Department)

According to a criminal complaint:

The 17-year-old boy, whose name was withheld, told police he’d been inside a gray-colored sedan with Ramirez and a few others Friday evening. The group was going to drop off Ramirez near the corner of Indiana Avenue and South 20th Street, but an SUV exited an alleyway and blocked the road.

The boy told police he’d suspected there was going to be trouble that night because another man in the vehicle had been “beefing” with Ramirez. The complaint doesn’t detail the nature of the alleged dispute, though the teen told police the other man had been involved in an estimated $300,000 theft earlier that week.

The boy told police he knew Ramirez had set up the shooting, according the complaint.

When the sedan had stopped, he explained, Ramirez was the first to get out of the car. He “got out so fast," the complaint notes the boy told police, "it was like he almost knew what was going to happen."

As he ran from the vehicle, the boy added, the shooter fired at the sedan and not at Ramirez. (Police reported over the weekend the shooter had fired into the sedan's "engine area" and that nobody was injured.)

Police later identified the shooter as Manuel — also identified in the complaint as Manual — Alberto Amador. Police determined Amador was associated with the SUV in question and matched a description of the suspect seen by witnesses.

A man and woman who'd been inside a home near the shooting scene also described hearing three gunshots that evening. The man immediately recognized the volley of gunfire as coming from what he believed would have been a .357- or .45-caliber pistol — something, he said, “with a lot of punch.”